How to Get Your First 1,000 Followers on Instagram

The social media giant Instagram is a growing platform that lets individuals, businesses,
and brands expand their reach. As a business owner, you can use the site to humanize your brand, reach potential customers, feature your products, portray your company,and even find future employees.

Reaching Your First 1,000 Followers on Instagram

Unfortunately, it is hard to gain a large following on Instagram unless you are an actor or some other famous person. Creating an audience takes time and daily attention. There are a few critical things that you can do to reach your first 1,000 followers. You will want to customize your profile, post exceptional content, write bright copy, utilize hashtags, and influence engagement.

Steps to Gain Social Media Followers

Here are the 14 steps required to gain your first 1,000 Instagram followers:

1. Optimize Your Profile: Your profile should look good and instantly tell your potential followers who are you and what your business is all about.
2. Username: Have a recognizable and easy to search username. This way, people who are searching for your business name can easily find you.
3. Public Profile: Always make sure your profile is set to public and not private.
   Profile Picture: Choose a profile picture that reflects your brand or business. You could use your company logo.
4. Bio: Your bio should be filled out completely. Focus on making it actionable and informative. Remember, the information that you provide lets people know what they need to know about your company at a glance. The data will be a huge deciding factor when they choose to follow you or not.
5. Link: Add a link to your Instagram bio so people can go directly to your business account. There is a clickable link site which is ideal. You can also use a shortened; customized Bitly link to attract even more clicks.
6. Notifications: You should always enable notifications under the options section by clicking on “Push Notification Settings.” Then click, “From Everyone.”
7. Other Social Media: Avoid linking your Instagram posts to Twitter or Facebook because those posts should always be different.
8. Quality Posts: When posting on other social media sites quality does not matter as much, but on Instagram, it is all about the visual. The images that you post should be top-notch. Instagram is predominately a phone app, so the photos that you take will probably be made using your mobile device.
9. Captions Matter: Yes, Instagram is predominately visual with photos and videos, but catchy and funny captions are a great way to draw in your audience and humanize your brand. You can ask questions or have a call to action to engage your followers.
10. Hashtag Your Posts: Adding hashtags draws users into your thread. You should use only about three hashtags when posting to gain quality followers.
11. Interaction Matters: When followers react and make comments on your posts, then it is imperative that you respond to them and comment back. This builds a genuine feeling of community. You should also not be afraid to interact with other businesses that are similar to yours on Instagram.
12. When to Post: Posts have been shown to be viewed the most when you post on Instagram Mondays and Thursdays. However, avoid posting between the hours of 3:00–4:00 p.m. for the time zone of your target audience. Most users engage with the content during non-work hours but they view it throughout the day.
13. Start Posting: To get started on Instagram, you must post a minimum of 15 posts with titles to great your audience’s’ attention.

Undoubtedly, the Instagram is a critical element in building a large following for your brand and business. It does take time but, ultimately, it is worth the effort to create a firm audience on the social media site.